The Council of Europe refuted reports in Israeli media that it had canceled a resolution from 2013 that called nonmedical circumcision of boys a harmful violation of children’s rights. The clarification Thursday on the position of the Council, a body for pan-European dialog that has no executive powers and is not part of the European…
Referencing a negative view of non-medical circumcision of boys, the Council of Europe recommended the custom be banned except when performed by “a person with the requisite training and skill.” The recommendation appeared in a resolution passed Wednesday by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which is a pan-European intergovernmental organization based in…
New York City has not only stopped requiring mohels to obtain written consent before performing a controversial circumcision rite — the city has also stopped alerting doctors and the public when it suspects that a mohel has infected a baby with herpes following the ritual, known as metzitzah b’peh or MBP. Between January 2013 and…
The New York City Board of Health repealed a consent form for a controversial circumcision rite. The vote Wednesday to repeal the consent form to allow the metzitzah b’peh rite was 9-1,with one abstention. A law requiring parents to sign a consent form for metzitzah b’peh was enacted in 2012 under Mayor Michael Bloomberg after…
A former county health official claims he has identified a source for herpes infections in ultra-Orthodox baby boys — and it’s not metzitzah b’peh, the controversial ritual in which a mohel uses his lips to suction blood from the circumcision wound. New York City health officials blame metzitzah b’peh, or MBP, for infecting 17 Jewish…
The New York City Board of Health may waive a consent form for a controversial circumcision rite. In an effort to cooperate with Orthodox community leaders, the Board of Health voted Wednesday night to mull a plan for hospitals to distribute a brochure in English and Yiddish to Orthodox patients that talks about the danger…
Everything has its price. For the redemption of a firstborn son, the Torah is quite specific: Numbers 18 instructs that the first son to pierce his mother’s womb belongs to God. You can bypass a life of priestly service through the pidyon haben, the ritual of redemption, held 31 days after the son’s birth. During…
The Sabbath fire that killed seven children in an Orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn on Saturday was at least the fourth deadly blaze in the borough resulting from Sabbath and holiday observance in the past 15 years. In all 11 people have been killed in the four fires, all but one of them children. At…
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